On Wings of Steel
by Neoalfa
Summary: Twelve years after the Holy Grail War, Emiya Shirou has lost everything. Unwillingly caught in a conflict between aliens he has to decide whether his ideals have died for good or if they can soar again... on wings of steel. - POST FATE -


**Enter stage left (I)**

* * *

A sudden bout of deceleration and a screeching of tires forced me out of my slumber and my eyes opened to the sight of Japanese soil out of the airplane's window.

With a groan I pulled myself up to a straight sitting position. Even though I had apparently slept for the entirety of the flight from London I didn't feel rested at all.

While the airplane slowed down to a halt I rolled my shoulders and craned my neck to the sides with a number of unpleasant cracks from my joints, before returning to look out of the window.

Japan. Home.

Not really. Not anymore.

The disembark was a smooth and uneventful process. The passengers got up from their seats and out of the plane in a orderly manner as expected.

I wish I could say that the passage through customs and immigration was just as smooth.

In the previous ten years the world had changed much. Technology had grown by leaps and bounds while medical research had many historical breakthroughs, both of which were spearheaded by the Japanese conglomerate known to the world at large as MBI.

Among such advancements there was the DNA-recognition system installed in almost every airports across the world. I say almost, because as it happens every time a new human-related technology is developed there is a required ethical debate to go along with it, slowing down the process of its distribution. For good reasons I might have added.

The degree of employment of these newly discovered technologies varied from nation to nation, but in Japan, where MBI had its main headquarter and by extension the most influence, all airports had long since adopted the new technology.

I suppose that when over twenty percent of the national industry and working force were under your employment, directly or indirectly, there wasn't much opposition you could face. The morality of it deserved an ethical debate of its own, but my grudge against MBI wasn't due to its unrivaled expansions.

It was their technology that had been giving me no end of troubles for a half an hour.

 **'** **!ERROR!'** the useless piece of junk read with bold characters for the umpteenth time.

"I'm really sorry about this," the attendant said, bowing apologetically. "It has never done anything quite like this."

"It's not a problem. I understand perfectly," I reassured the fidgeting man. "I'm in no hurry"

While that's was true for me, the other passengers in line were of a different counsel.

To ease their burden I let them go ahead and much to everyone's consternation there was no similar problem with any of the other passengers. One by one they passed through the gate until I was the only one left waiting.

"I'm really sorry about this," the attendant insisted like a broken record. Honestly, I was more tired with his needlessly subservient behavior than with the unexpected hold up, but he probably misunderstood the source of my frustrated frown.

Fortunately I still had my usual identification on me and with a few rounds of old fashioned checks the authorities were able to clear me for entrance, though they asked me to remain available to investigate the technical error.

I assured them that I expected to remain in Shin Tokyo for the foreseeable future and gave them both my phone number and my new address in the city.

Retrieving my luggage, I finally left the airport behind me, pondering how all the advancement of mankind still haven't managed to make the process of travelling abroad any simpler for the average person.

Despite that, there were things in that day and age that would have looked like something straight out of a science-fiction novel when I was still in high-school, a little over ten years before.

Ten years. I wish I could say that things had improved for me as much for as they did for the rest of humanity, but I had to admit that my progress was measured not by the things I had gained but by rather by those I had lost.

"These hands will never hold anything," I said under my breath as I stepped into the air of a mid-September evening.

It was neither a curse nor self-pity, but a simple statement of facts. They were the truth of Emiya Shirou, therefore they could be different.

The summer was drawing to a close but the gentle breeze that ruffled my prematurely graying hair still held the warmth of days gone by.

I waved my hand to a taxi and step into the vehicle when he stopped by me. I quickly instructed the driver as of my destination and he immediately sped away from the airport and toward the city.

The scenery outside of the window was just about what it could be expected from a metropolis like Shin Tokyo: a cacophony of buildings everywhere the eye can reach, all the way up to the sky. Among them there was the tallest building in Japan, which housed MBI's headquarters.

Shin Tokyo. A metropolis built by and for MBI. It's in this place that I had decided to establish my base of operations. It's from here that my search, my hunt, would continue throughout the county.

There was little doubt to me that _she_ was there somewhere, in Japan. It was the perfect hiding place, after all, distant both geographically and politically from the two major powers of the west.

She was smart that one. She had been giving the slip to her pursuers for years, to the point that they had all given up on finding her.

All except me.

I have been and perhaps still am many things: criminally ignorant at times, suicidally reckless more often than not, hopelessly naïve just about all the time, but a quitter was never one of them. Because of that I had lost a great deal of things over the years. Irreplaceable, priceless things but for all my faults it was never because I had given up on them.

That time is no different.

But even if I didn't want to quit there was just so much I could do by myself and with only my own resources. Through the years I had already spent whatever material possession Kiritsugu left me and I ended up selling the Emiya household months before to finance my personal quest, which meant that even that money was mostly gone by then. Soon my bank account would be empty and before that happened I have to create a source of income for myself.

Basically I was looking for a job, but the issue was purely logistical. I always knew my way around mechanics and electronics, courtesy of years of repairing appliances and because of my more exoteric abilities, the combination of which earned me the title of Fake Janitor at school. It was intended as a snub, but I took pride in it instead.

In light of that I invested a portion of what little I had left to my name to buy a small warehouse and the tools required to start up my own business in Shin Tokyo, a place that would double as a Workshop for the time of my permanence in the city. The job of a repairman would have also made my moving around the country at different times relatively inconspicuous.

A way to provide for myself, privacy and a cover were the minimum requirements for any long term operation and I had them set in one fell swoop. Even then it wasn't going to be as easy as when I had both money and time to invest fully but if the alternative was giving up I'd take whatever I could get away with.

The taxi dropped me in the industrial area of the city, right in front of my newly bought property. The building was relatively old but in good conditions. There were repairs to be made but I could see to them myself so I wasn't worried.

However, as I much as I was interested in my new investment, there as something else that caught my attention. As I took my first breath of the city air I got the feeling of something being amiss.

I was always very good at detecting things that are "out of place" so to speak, a type of heightened sensitivity to all forms of unnaturalness that has served me well in the through the years. In spite of that, I could not pinpoint a specific source for that feeling. In fact it felt like it's all around me simultaneously.

I chalked it up to the city itself. Shin Tokyo was the biggest human city I've ever visited, bigger even than London and it had been built mostly over the course of less than five years in response to MBI's exponential expansion. There was nothing natural about this city in the first place. Even the green areas present within its perimeter were the product of carefully planned civil engineering.

No matter how I put it, nature had been raped in this place. _Unnatural_ was definitely the most fitting word to describe it.

I gave a shrug and took out the keys from my pocket, stepping into my new place.

The warehouse was empty except for a few cardboard boxes here and there and a thin layer of dust on the pavement.

It was my first time seeing the place in person, having conducted the transaction through Internet, phone calls and the banks. I had to admit that getting this place had been a bargain and a huge windfall for me. The previous owner's business relationship with MBI had turned sour for reasons I didn't want to and he thought that getting out of the city, possibly very fast was the best course of action. That only meant that he didn't have much time to argue about prices, opting to sell to the guy who could pay the whole sum upfront.

His loss had been my gain and I became the sole owner of an empty warehouse that I could easily adapt for my purposes.

I climbed the flight of metal stairs that led to the upper floor, which consisted of a prefabricated office with windows both on the inside and the outside of the building. It had been used as an office and much like the warehouse downstairs it was nearly empty save for a table with two chairs in the middle of the room and a couch against the wall that had seen better years. Their worm out state was no doubt the reason why they had been left behind.

From the outline of the furniture that used to be against the walls and the visible plumbing I could safely guess that there had been at least a small kitchenette in here.

The ambient was divided in three separate spaces: the aforementioned office area, a smaller room with no windows that was probably mean to be a storage or an archive and finally a tiny bathroom with a shower.

It was surely essential, but more than sufficient for me. More importantly it had all the necessary to be used as an apartment, further cutting down my living expense.

I tossed my luggage on the ground and sat on the worn-out couch with a tired sigh, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from my pocket as I did so. Tapping the bottom with my thumb I pick up the cigarette with my lips. As I dos so, a slip of paper falls out of my pocket and onto the floor, facing down.

I don't bother picking it up.

God, I was tired. More tired than I have ever been. Even during both Wars, with all the fighting and the wounds and the deaths I was never this… _empty_.

The worst thing was that I just couldn't rest. Even when I forced myself to stop, just so that my mind and body could recuperate enough to work efficiently again I couldn't sleep easily.

Every time I closed my eyes they were waiting for me. The people I failed to save.

Saber, Illya, Taiga, Sakura, Rin.

Some hero I was. I couldn't even keep safe from harm the people closest to me, yet I had somehow convinced myself that I could protect those who were further away from my reach.

What a fucking joke.

Now I knew why Archer couldn't stand the sight of me. I had come to share the same sentiment. In trying to save everyone I managed to save precisely nothing.

Oh, no. I'm aware that my actions made a difference to someone, somewhere. Faceless people whose names I never knew were saved, while the people I held dear slipped through my fingers and into oblivion.

And the worse thing is… they never blamed me. I tried my best every time, giving everything I had to give. I threw myself in situations where the possibility of dying was high if not certain and somehow came out of them with both life and limbs… while the people I held dear disappeared one after another.

Or maybe that was what being a hero meant all along?

I leaned forward and picked up the piece of paper that fell from my pocket without looking at it and put it back where it belonged.

I didn't have the answer to that question. All I had were my convictions, jaded as they might have become over the years and one person I had to find, no matter how.

* * *

-xXx-

* * *

AN: So… yeah. I know I have other stories to write but this wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it down.

I'm not even going to pretend that gabriel blessing's _'In Flight'_ didn't have any influence on this. The whole Sekirei x Fate/Stay Night crossover fandom is ruled by that one fic and its spinoffs. This story however isn't meant to be a derivate from that. Shirou isn't Minato and for that reason the story is going to follow an entirely separate plot line.

Now, speaking of the background of Shirou in this story, this is post Fate route, twelve years after the Fifth Holy Grail war and two years after the conflict to prevent further Grail wars.

As you might have surmised from the chapter itself, just about everyone close to Shirou has died in the twelve years form the end of the war.

Saber is dead.  
Illya is dead  
Rin is Dead.  
Taiga is dead.  
Sakura is dead.

This has changed Shirou a lot. Even if he still thinks that helping is right he doesn't really expect anything out of it. People are going to die either way and his participation is only to save as many lives as possible. He's not Archer so he doesn't believe in killing one to save ten and whatnot but he accepts that he can't save everyone no matter how hard he tries.

Well, that's all for now. Path of the King is going to be updated next.


End file.
